Waste of time

An Exercise In Nonsense

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The use of nightmarish visual imagery for effect, and the reliance on the setting to illustrate Carol's mental state made me think that Repulsion is a film adaptation of one of Alfred Tennyson's poems directed by David Lynch! I'm not a fan of movies that rely so much on allegory. However, I loved Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive. But to be honest, I wasn't invested in these movies as much as I should. Nevertheless, I found Repulsion very engrossing, and I was deeply invested in the character of Carol.Polanski managed to evoke an atmosphere filled with dread and fear. but to make it more disturbing, he used another atmosphere that's quiet different and contradictory to the main one he used to depict Carol's paranoia. This contradictory atmosphere is actually very similar to the one that's used in french new wave films. Yes, it's already seems very weird and creepy! Almost every hallucination scene leaves you with a chill in the spine.Catherine Deneuve gave a very accurate, precise, and unsettling performance. Carol Ledoux could have been monotonous, and tedious due to her tepid nature. Instead, and thanks to Deneuve's captivating performance, Carol turned out to be so sympathetic and relatable that I felt for her. As for issues, I think the first act was longer than it should be, and the movie took a long time to reach the climax of its plot, but it was never boring, and built up tension very well. From the tracking shots to the use of the unsettling sounds, you can see that Repulsion has a big influence on Aronofsky, especially his most recent, and most controversial work, mother! Also, the closing shot of this movie must be up there with the closing shots of The 400 Blows, Fight Club, Inception, Seven Samurai, Stalker,..... As a matter of fact, Repulsion's final shot isn't just beautiful, profound, or thought-provoking, but it's very important and absolutely necessary to complete Carol's character arc.(9/10)

The movie is eccentrically brilliant in the sense that it explores the other side of human sexuality, not usually spoken or written about and hidden inside the invisible shutters in broad daylight. Polanski treats the complexities of human psychology through a dexterous storytelling and camera direction that meanders sinisterly through the anxious gaze of Carol ( the protagonist in the story). The film explores the disturbing manifestations of childhood trauma, much later in the life of the shy protagonist, Carol. It is with this narrative fidelity that the film exposes through a fortuitous unfolding of events the transformation of Carol from a shy girl whose generic repulsion towards men transmogrifies into heinous murders. Her inability to confront the past precipitates into a complex web of phobias and absent-minded behavior. She shuts herself at her home severing all connections with the world that she knows is exclusively dominated by men. And yet the specter of man manifests her nightmares as a phantom figure who comes every night to rape and molest her. The ticking of bells, a transitory silence of voices at the moment of rape, cracking of walls, hands coming out of walls to grope her suggest the atrociousness of the event which cannot be expressed in any narrative medium. Polanski takes a creative swerve in representing the trauma time through these tropes, since no verbal medium is sufficient in reconstructing the event. Unlike other modern Hollywood production which solely relies on jump scares in producing the feeling of horror; this movie takes an ingenious take, not only in its storytelling of an irreparable traumatic event, but also promises an exceptionally spine chilling experience.

Years ago ( '70s) I saw this movie with some friends at the cinema. I was strongly impressed with a sense of awe (== terror). But there was no VHS or DVD so I put it in a drawer of my memory. Now I am retired and sometimes go back in time. Happily this movie was on DVD so I bought it. When you see it again after so many years "the penny finally dropped".I don't know much about Polanski (except from Wikipedia), but I think that he is a "gifted by nature".When you try to circumscribe (no! not geometrical, but Aristotelian) the main character, a woman, you soon find yourself immersed in what Wittgenstein called "the witchery of language". She appears not to be sensitive (a hot item these days) but sensuous (today this word is undefined!) so I use sensible in the original sense. This is not erotic but emotional (does this still exist??). And as she is very sensible she is apt to here environment. And I think that is just what Polanski does, addressing you (the audience)??? I think many people identify with here environment and expel here as "mad". But I think that if Polanski should have had "bad manners" he should have called this movie "Mirror".Enjoy,J.P. (Jan) Clifford

Repulsion is a very slow movie—probably too slow for many viewers. It's also far from what I would call a cheery experience, charting a sexually repressed young woman's descent into madness and murder. It's down to the sheer brilliance of Roman Polanski's direction and star Catherine Deneuve's powerful central performance that the film proves riveting throughout, even when there's (seemingly) very little happening on screen.The movie starts off like a typical '60s kitchen sink drama, with sulky Belgian beautician Carol (Deneuve) struggling to focus at work and trying to ignore the advances of interested males. At first, Carol merely seems mopey, but things gradually start to get weird: her behaviour towards her sister's boyfriend Michael (Ian Hendry) is unusually hostile, hopeful beau Colin is completely blanked, while a stolen kiss from the young man makes her feel violently ill. But it is when her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) leaves with Michael for a holiday in Italy that Carol really loses it: left on her own, her psychosis rapidly worsens, and she begins to hallucinate, cracks appearing in the apartment walls and strange men attacking her in her room at night.When Colin visits the apartment to see why the phone rings but is never answered, Carol lumps him over the head with a candlestick and dumps his body in the bath. Later, the landlord (Patrick Wymark) also meets a sticky end after he tries to take advantage of the mentally unbalanced young woman, a few slashes with a cut-throat razor putting an end to his lecherous ways. Eventually, Helen and Michael return home where they find a scene of unimaginable horror, with Carol catatonic in the bedroom.While not a particularly pleasant viewing experience, Repulsion has to be admired as a work of art, as an intense character study, and as a master-class in movie making, every frame, every sound, every image carefully considered. Carol's misery and loneliness is contrasted by the cheerful laughing coming from a nearby school and the lively music from a trio of street entertainers, and Polanski heightens the feeling of unease with twisty-turning camera-work and excellent use of light and shade, turning an ordinary apartment into a claustrophobic prison. Also adding to the overall unsettling effect is Chico Hamilton's score, which begins light and jazzy but becomes more discordant as the film progresses.Certainly not a film that I'll be visiting again in a hurry (it's way too depressing for that), but one that any serious cineaste should ensure that they have seen at least the once.